


The Reichenbach Ballad

by thankyouandyou



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 09:04:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/595926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thankyouandyou/pseuds/thankyouandyou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tonight's a danger night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Reichenbach Ballad

A pink phone is ringing inside John Watson's ribcage. It wakes him up. He looks around. Mrs Hudson is not there to pick it up, so he pries it carefully from between his ribs and wipes it with his shirtsleeve before pressing it to his ear, yes hello.

(No telemarketers please, we are in mourning, is what usually comes next, Mrs Hudson has been very brave but she can barely handle those calls anymore, won't pick up the phone- _John! You have another one_.) 

The voice on the line suggests that he should listen.

Hello John. Time to buy plane tickets and a new black tie.

Yes, hang on, John says and struggles to his feet, it’s hard to move with a hole in your chest and one on your shoulder. That’s his blood on the sand, next to a small splash of sweetened coffee, black, two sugars please, John, thank you.

Lestrade is drinking coffee, but he takes it black like John. He’s sitting on a pink suitcase in his civilian clothes and leather boots and his teeth are very white, his skin very tanned, but no tan above the wrists, he’s been abroad but not sunbathing. Of course. This is war. They are war heroes.

John walks up to him. Greets him. “Greg.” Lestrade has a blue scarf tied around his head to protect him from the sun. John rubs the fabric between his fingers, and feels like he knows it somehow. He wants to ask Lestrade if he stole this from someone. If he took it from a dead body. These things happen, you want to keep your friends with you. He doesn’t ask.

“What is this?”

John waves his hands at the sand around them, the furniture scattered all over, the broken pipettes half-buried in the sand.

Lestrade looks up, squinting, even though John’s shadow is covering his face. “It’s a drugs bust,” he says. John nods. John knows the symptoms of PTSD. Lestrade obviously hasn’t slept in days.

“Listen,” John says. “I’m going to give you something so you can sleep.” He pulls two bottles from his pocket, a single white pill in each. “Pick one,” he tells Lestrade, “and I’ll take the other. There’s a Good Bottle and a Bad Bottle, but I don’t think it matters anymore.”

The Inspector grabs a bottle, unscrews the tip and swallows it dry. He lays down with his head on the pink case and shuts his eyes. He is asleep in seconds, or he might be dead. John settles next to him, pops the pill in his mouth and starts stitching his wounds back together.

The phone starts ringing again as soon as he’s done patching himself up and he crouches, hands to his knees, yelling at it to _S_ _hut up_. He limps towards it anyway, drags his bad foot all the way to the phone booth because they _need_ a case, there’s only so much Mrs Hudson’s walls can take before they crumble, castles crumbling from the inside.

He shuts the little glass door behind him and scans the bag of thumbs again, and again until the chip-and-pin machine picks up the barcode. He doesn’t lose his temper this time, he’s patient. He empties his pockets on top of it, house keys, credit card, tickets to the circus, receipts, stolen Scotland Yard badge. He isn’t sure what he’s looking for but the store is empty so he takes his time and laughs to himself when he remembers, yes of course. He takes the bullet from between his teeth and pushes it down the slot. The sound that follows should be metallic, but it’s like a pebble falling a long way down into a well.

The screen bleeps, reads ACCESS GRANTED so John puts down the bag of bodyparts and starts walking down the street, in the middle of the road. Two black lines are spreading out on either side of him, as far as the eye can see. Countless immobilized cabs, like a funeral march on standstill. Nothing stirs. It’s quiet, too quiet, too much like being underwater. He’s not unnerved, silence doesn’t alarm him. He’s just very thirsty. He keeps walking because that’s what you do in the desert.

“Doctor Watson.”

John whips around, takes out his gun and aims. Mycroft is sitting cross legged on the roof of a cab, a porcelain cup and saucer set beside him. There’s a white cigarette between his fingers. He raises his arms in surrender. He looks bored.

John lowers his hand.

“You don’t smoke.”

Mycroft shrugs. John hasn’t seen him do that before. He’s dressed in black, perfect, absolute black. John thinks that simply touching the man’s jacket will stain his fingers like typewriter ink. John doesn’t have a black tie.

“I don’t have a black tie. And I don’t want to go through his closet.”

Mycroft nods. “It’s alright.” His eyes are soft and tired. He should sleep more. “You should go home,” he says. “Tonight’s a danger night.”

John shakes his head. “I’ve got plans.”

“No. You can’t stay with him, John.”

John shuffles his feet. He needs to keep going. “I’m sorry.”

Mycroft takes a long drag and holds it in his lungs like he doesn’t want to breathe again. He looks away. He does not really worry anymore, about anything.

John starts running, he can smell a storm coming on. The rain in this city is toxic, it can burn your skin off. He hopes Mycroft will take cover, though he doesn’t warn him. Surely he can hear the thunder. But Mycroft doesn’t really care, anymore. About anything.

John reaches the hospital and starts climbing the stairs, slowly now, panting, because his leg is killing him and his clothes are soaked through.

Molly is curled into herself near the top of the staircase, gutted Christmas gifts around her hospital white shoes. There’s glitter under her nails and she’s wearing red lipstick. John stops to press his lips to her forehead and she clutches at him briefly, smiles, I liked him, he was nice.

He runs up the rest of the stairs. He gets to a corridor, there’s a black door at the end of it and John walks towards it. There’s a sign on the door and words on the sign: LIBERTY IN. John knows the quote but can’t remember how it ends. He touches a discolored part of the wood under the sign, slightly darker than the rest. He traces patterns with his fingers, there were numbers there before, for a long time, but they’re gone now.

He tries the handle. Locked.

Two men in uniform pass by and they greet him – _Sir_. John waits until they’re gone to scratch thirteen letters on the dark wood with his pocket knife. The door clicks softly and opens by itself, water rushing out of the room in a small flood.

John sighs, what have you done this time, and tucks his gun to the back of his trousers.

The water is pouring down in a steady stream from a crack on the ceiling, punched-in holes in the shape of a smiling face, the grin growing larger and larger as more water comes down.

It’s like we’re under a pool, John thinks, or a waterfall.

The courtroom’s packed, dead bodies stacked to the pews and the jurybox with their arms crossed over papers that look like notes. They turn out to be worn take-out menus, when John takes a look. Numbers circled in red ink because _someone_ keeps forgetting that he's allergic to pineapple.

“Don’t pry,” the voice says, and John turns around to find a man sitting in an armchair where the witness box should be. John didn’t notice him on his way in. His long legs are sticking out awkwardly in front of him, toes touching the water in a mildly irritating way. He’s wearing a strange hat and he’s drenched to the bone and he’s burning from the inside-out, he's on fire, John’s a doctor, he can tell.

“Don’t act all mysterious,” John snaps. “I’m here-”

Well, he doesn’t really know why he’s here, does he. He tries to come closer but the man holds a pale hand out.

“I don’t think so. Do you?” he asks like he’s really not sure, which is unusual, and John reaches behind him for his gun, tosses it away into the water, you shouldn’t be afraid, I am a doctor, tell me what’s wrong.

The man frowns at him.

“Me?” 

He’s angry, suddenly, his eyes are red.

“There’s nothing wrong with _me_.”

They stare at each other for moments that stretch on and on. John doesn’t move his eyes from the pale face and knows that he just has to be patient, and firm. It doesn’t help if you humor him all the time. He wants to remember the man’s name so he can speak it in a steady tone. It’s on the tip of his tongue but it’s a funny one, hard to pronounce, like Rumpelstiltskin, like Wenceslas.

The man drops his head, picks off his hat and throws it away. It wasn’t his anyway, John knows that. He runs a hand through his hair, presses the heel against one of his eyes.

“I’m sorry.”

John is a soldier. It took him a while to adjust to civilian life but he still makes up his mind faster than the average bloke. Just three words and he's chasing after cabs, he’s shooting people through windows. He wades closer despite the man’s alarmed look but in the end he doesn’t need to get too close to understand.

He stops.

“You’re dead.”

The man smiles at the water. At John’s reflection in the water. It’s brief but genuine, satisfied, John can tell by the lines on his face. There are enough lines on his face, the right ones.

“Who did this?” John asks, and doesn’t know why his voice is trembling when his hands are not.

“ _I_ did,” says the man, but John knows that can’t be possible. These aren’t the rules.

“How did you know?”

John flexes his fingers. He feels like the man’s stealing his lines, leaving him to improvise, think John, think. (You know what I do, off you go.) Everything seems reversed in this place, like walking on the ceiling with your bleeding muscles exposed and your skin on the inside.

“I didn’t know, I saw.”

The man sits back on his chair, crosses his left hand over his right that’s been resting on his lap this entire time. He raises his eyebrows. A challenge. They love those. A chance to show off- that's what they _do_.

“Go on then.”

John takes a moment to breathe. Breathing, breathing’s boring, and the stranger’s staring at him like he means enough. (For a lifetime. Far too much.) Like he’s waiting to be recognized, like he’s patient for once, and John knows he can remember, theoretically you don’t forget anything, you just have to find your way back to it, someone told him once and he thought it was daft but he kept it. He didn’t delete it. John didn’t delete a thing.

“Tell me.”

“The way you hold yourself,” John explains. “It’s obvious you’re trying to sit upright but you can’t, something’s stopping you. You’re leaning slightly to your right, and your breathing’s labored, far too labored , I’m thinking, broken ribs, punctured lung.”

“ _Lungs_ ,” the man corrects him. “But yes, go on, you’re in sparkling form. What else.”

John ignores that. Ignores all of that. He goes on. It’s not easy.

“You are right handed but you’re only using your left.”

The man drums his fingers on his own collarbone. His curls are dripping.

“Could be a quirk. A habit. I might be doing it on purpose.”

John shakes his head.

“You’re not. You always gesticulate when you’re talking and now your right arm’s dead. I’m not an idiot. Dislocated shoulder and a couple of fractures. You won’t be able to play the violin again. Too much damage.”

The man smiles, oddly proud.

“Shame. Anything else?”

John’s breaking out in a cold sweat. He looks away from the man, anywhere but him. He breathes through his nose, like he does after nightmares. Forces himself to speak.

“Your legs are broken in various places, but it doesn’t matter.”

The man frowns. Oh?

“You’re paralyzed from the waist down. Can’t tell from this distance, but I’m guessing spinal injury. You fell.”

John fights to get the words out.

The man nods.

There’s a riding crop floating in the water that has reached John’s knees now, an umbrella has sunk to the bottom. Ironic. (Is it ironic? Why is it ironic. He can’t recall.) There’s a plate of mince pies on one of the courthouse seats, next to a stiff dead dog with three bullet holes on his side. There’s a memory stick baked in every pie, there is a hairpin inside the dog’s stomach. There’s a man in an expensive suit face down on the judge’s bench, one hand dangling over the edge, an invitation to dance. John is suddenly irrationally afraid the paralyzed dead man will get up from his chair and move to grab it, and John will have to watch them waltz around in the waters, wrapped in semtex, dripping blood.

“Good. Very good.”

He snaps his eyes back to the man’s face. He’s still there. John exhales and looks away again.

“Are we done?”

The man shakes his head.

“Finish it. You might as well. You’re almost at the bottom of your list.”

John nods. Yes. That’s true isn’t it. He moves closer, close enough to reach for one of the man’s useless knees. The skin is cold under his hands. His hands are perfectly steady. He can’t look at him, but he holds on to him and it feels familiar, it feels sickening.

“There’s a substance staining your sheet over your left shoulder. I am an army doctor.”

The man’s voice is very warm, unlike his skin. “Any good?”

“Very good.” 

“So?”

 "I recognize brain matter when I see it.”

The man falls back into his chair and breathes out deep. Some tension seems to leave his body, he looks boneless now, resigned. Accepting. There’s a weary little smile on his face, the one he gets when he solves another puzzle, another slice of the universe disassembled at his feet, the world in grays again.

He trails two fingers down John’s wrist, soft and freezing, like an apology. Like I’m sorry for the acid in the bathroom sink and the lab experiment and the head in the fridge, I’m sorry for dying, you don’t mind do you?

John wrenches himself away. He cups a palm over his mouth and tries not to scream. Somewhere in the distance, a cell door is locking. He can hear the howling of enormous dogs.

The man extends a hand. His eyes are transparent and guilty.

“It’s alright. It’s okay now.”

John screams.

NO IT’S NOT IT’S NOT.

He lunges forward, grabs the fabric, pulls it hard but it won’t give way, it’s like it’s glued to him, sewn to his skin.

“Why are you in that sheet, Sherlock.”

Sherlock smiles, catches his hand, holds him for a moment and lets go. “Man falls off a building, bashes his head in. Hardly a seven, John. John.”

John falls to his knees. There’s so much water in the room now, there are so many things floating around him, a black paper rose, a violin bow, a silk blue robe, ticket stubs.

He starts naming deities. He asks if this is Heaven and Sherlock laughs.

“People don’t really go to Heaven when they die, John, they’re taken to a special room and burned.”

John remembers stating that it’s not possible for victim to have done it, Sherlock, it’s not in the rules.

Sherlock touches John’s head where it’s pressed against his knee, taps his fingers rhythmically against his scalp like when he’s bored but not too much. Bored enough to be civil, to sit beside him on the sofa and watch the news, correct them and forget them.

When John looks up again the whole room is on fire. There is no smoke. Sherlock’s face is eerie in this red light and there are hundreds of lucky cats on every surface, waving them goodbye as they melt.

John groans, refuses, nononono. Sherlock holds on to his wrist again, and his skin is warm now, unbelievably warm, almost scalding. He’s already burning. John knew that all along. John grabs on to Sherlock’s arm as well, mirror-mirror, as if that will convince him to stay. He can feel Sherlock's pulse. It is too fast. He wants to break all of Sherlock's bones that aren't yet broken and make him bleed, rough him up and drag him back, he wants to say, I'll come after you.

Sherlock's face is pained. He flexes his fingers. "You know the rules."

John gasps out a startled laugh.

The rules are wrong, he thinks. Then the _rules_ are _wrong_.

Sherlock’s pupils are so wide. He leans closer, over the flames and the rainwater, over his bent legs and their linked hands, the erratic, wayward thrumming of his blood. He rests his head on John's and they breathe against each other like old friends. Like they've had their time.

John closes his eyes and tastes salt on his lips.

“Your pulse is racing,” he whispers stupidly- it’s too fast for a dead man or a man or the Sherlock I know that’s been reliably informed he has no heart. (Sherlock would say he is not good with tenses.) "Isn't that against the rules?"

The room burns and Sherlock smiles, John can feel it.

“Of _course_ it is.”


End file.
